15 A Letter to My University: Open Access to Education

Jacob McMaster

Dear Plymouth State University,

You pay $522,000 per year for databases. Most of that money I would assume this is coming from the student’s tuition. If Plymouth State switched over to open access most of that money spent on data bases and what not could be used for other things that the school might need. Open Access is the free, availability of research articles and online textbooks combined with the rights to use these articles in the digital environment through creative commons license. It is also proven that open access books/articles can be updated more frequently then a typical article or textbook, thus making Open Access more accurate and updated to current events. Many people think since open access can be edited by students and teachers that it won’t be as reliable as a textbook. This isn’t always correct though; Open Access could be a better form of Wikiuniveristy if every college used it, since their mission is to allow information to be used for free for any subject.

If Plymouth is worried about the credibility of the Open Access websites, books, or articles they don’t need to be because the websites can be verified to be credible. We can make sure to regularly review the articles and check the validity of the information with the publisher. Also, there could be a username and password so that only select people are allowed to write information. This also holds people accountable for what they write. Therefor all the information in each article is up to date with the most recent news and information. When professors can’t access the most recent research, they are deprived of the opportunity to bring that material into the classroom to their students. With science advancing every day, it’s important that professors have access to cutting-edge research, so the students educations are not outdated before they even finish a course.